The present invention relates generally to a point-of-sales rug display device in the operating mode of which, from a stack of rugs, one rug at a time is separated from the stack and displayed to a prospective customer, thereby obviating the heretofore necessity to exert a great deal of physical effort in unrolling or moving rugs by hand so that. the successive rugs might be seen, and for which usually the services of two or more men are needed for this purpose.
The replacement by automation of the hand manipulation of rugs to facilitate customer selection is the focus of numerous prior patents, as exemplified by U.S. Pat. No. 2,577,366 for xe2x80x9cMachine For Displaying Rugsxe2x80x9d issued to E. Reiss et al. on Dec. 4, 1951 and U.S. Pat. No. 3,289,860 for xe2x80x9cSystem For Handling Stacked Sheetsxe2x80x9d also applicable for rugs, issued to G. A. Dean on Jun. 9, 1964, to mention but a few.
In the aforesaid and all other known prior patents, the stack is worked from the top down, with each top rug removed to a clearance position exposing the next in line rug, until an exposed rug is satisfactory to a customer, removed and, of course, replaced, and the integrity of the stack restored to repeat the selection process. While the working of the stack from the top down involves only the handling of one rug, its removal to an out-of-way clearance position providing an unobstructed view of the next underlying rug is a complication which has resulted in a correspondingly complicated mechanism.
Broadly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an effective reverse order stack separation of successive rugs overcoming the foregoing and other shortcomings of the prior art.
More particularly, it is an object to raise the stack en masse and release from the bottom thereof, using to advantage guided gravity descent, to display at floor level successive rugs, all, as will be better understood as the description proceeds.